Everyone loves a good TED Talk, here’s one of our favorites:
Beth Ford, CEO of Land O’Lakes, a U.S. farming cooperative that operates across the world, discusses what farmers need to become economically and environmentally sustainable.
According to Ford, 18 million Americans don’t have broadband access and most of those (14 million) are in rural areas. Without high-speed broadband, farming businesses cannot use modern equipment effectively and data analytics to improve farming practices.
Says Ford, “...data-intensive models...require bandwidth to utilize them effectively. So, it's a major issue from a business perspective, it's an efficiency, it's a sustainable production issue.”
To make farms more resilient to the effects of a warmer climate, Ford argues that farmers need a way to make better decisions about sustainable business practices. In response, Land o’ Lakes has launched a business called Truterra which is an insights engine into the farm at a granular level.
Truterra collects information acre by acre about the soil, water situation, the type of tractor to use and how many passes to make, among other things. This enables farmers to make better decisions about what to plant, how to irrigate, and can find efficiencies by doing only what’s needed at the right time. It will also help farmers transition away from certain crops that are used in biofuels if electric vehicles become the norm.
In addition, Land o’ Lakes started a partnership with the Soil Health Institute and launched the Trucarbon platform, to create carbon credits. By using both platforms, farmers can now make better farming decisions while at the same time improving carbon capture, which increases their profitability.
Microsoft was Trucarbon’s first customer as it aims to reach a negative carbon footprint by 2030. A similar partnership with Nori, a carbon credit trading platform, enables companies to buy carbon credits from farmers who are capturing carbon in their soil and crops.
But none of this is possible without broadband access so Land o’ Lakes is addressing this issue with Microsoft’s FarmBeats program which is expanding broadband access to farms to close the digital divide.
Ford says, “we need to put the farmer at the center of sustainable solutions.” If the farmer isn’t profitable then the farm and ultimately food production will not be sustainable.